How To Make Soap

The intention here is to
provide the basic data on how to make soap from the most basic materials.
There are many fancier soap recipes which make better soaps, as long as
you have all the ingredients.

The first write-up assumes you can just go to a store
and buy the ingredients. The second only assumes you have some animals
you will be butchering and that you have been burning wood fires and cleverly
saved the ashes.

Basic Method

[A. This first write-up is taken from Hulda ClarkÝs
book, "The Cure for All Diseases," pages 529-530.]

A small plastic dishpan, about 10" x 12" A glass or enamel 2-quart saucepan 1 can of lye (sodium hydroxide), 12 ounces 3 pounds of lard Plastic gloves [really; use eye-protection too] Water

1. Pour 3 cups of very cold water (refrigerate water
overnight first) into the 2-quart saucepan. 2. Slowly and carefully add the lye, a little bit
at a time, stirring it with the a wooden or plastic utensil. (Use plastic
gloves for this; test them for holes first.) Do not breathe the vapor or
lean over the container or have children nearby. Above all _use no metal_.
The mixture will get very hot. In olden days, a sassafras branch was used
to stir, imparting a fragrance and insect deterrent for mosquitoes, lice,
fleas and ticks. 3. Let cool at least one hour in a safe place. Meanwhile,
the unwrapped lard should be warming up to room temperature in the plastic
dishpan. 4. Slowly and carefully, pour the lye solution into
the dishpan with the lard. The lard will melt. Mix thoroughly, at least
15 minutes, until it looks like thick pudding. 5. Let it set until the next morning, then cut it
into bars. It will get harder after a few days. Then package.

If you wish to make soap based on olive oil, use
about 48 ounces. It may need to harden for a week.

Liquid soap

Make chips from your home-made soap cake. Add enough
hot water to dissolve. Add citric acid to balance the pH (7 to 8). If you
do not, this soap may be too harsh for your skin.

Basic Method When There Are No Stores!

[This write-up was taken from one
done by Marietta Ellis concerning the soap-making practices of colonial
America, with the tense mainly changed from the past into the present.]

Saponification is a very big chemical word for the
rather complex but easy to create soap making reaction. Saponification
is what happens when a fatty acid meets an alkali. When fats or oils, which
contain fatty acids are mixed with a strong alkali, the alkali first splits
the fats or oils into their two major parts fatty acids and glycerin. After
this splitting of the fats or oils, the sodium or potassium part of the
alkali joins with the fatty acid part of the fat or oils. This combination
is then the potassium or sodium salt of the fatty acid. As we said at the
start, this is soap.

Soap Making Takes Three Basic Steps

1.Making of the wood ash lye. 2.Rendering or cleaning the fats. 3.Mixing the fats and lye solution together and
boiling the mixture to make the soap.

First Let's Make The Lye

In making soap the first ingredient required is a liquid
solution of potash commonly called lye.

The lye solution was obtained by placing wood ashes
in a bottomless barrel set on a stone slab with a groove and a lip carved
in it. The stone in turn rested on a pile of rocks. To prevent the ashes
from getting in the solution a layer of straw and small sticks was placed
in the barrel then the ashes were put on top. The lye was produced by slowly
pouring water over the ashes until a brownish liquid oozed out the bottom
of the barrel. This solution of potash lye was collected by allowing it
to flow into the groove around the stone slab and drip down into a clay
vessel at the lip of the groove.

Some colonists used an ash hopper for the making
of lye instead of the barrel method. The ash hopper, was kept in a shed
to protect the ashes from being leached unintentionally by a rain fall.
Ashes were added periodically and water was poured over at intervals to
insure a continuous supply of lye. The lye dripped into a collecting vessel
located beneath the hopper.

[Use whatever you have available or can make.]

Now The Fats Are Prepared

The preparation of the fats or grease to be used in
forming the soap is the next step. This consists of cleaning the fats and
grease of all other impurities contained in them.

The cleaning of fats is called rendering and is the
smelliest part of the soap making operation. Animal fat, when removed from
the animals during butchering, must be rendered before soap of any satisfactory
quality can be made from it. This rendering removes all meat tissues that
still remain in the fat sections. Fat obtained from cattle is called tallow
while fat obtained from pigs is called lard.

If soap is being made from grease saved from cooking
fires, it is also rendered to remove all impurities that have collected
in it. The waste cooking grease being saved over a period of time without
the benefits of refrigeration usually become rancid, so this cleaning step
is very important to make the grease sweeter. It will result in a better
smelling soap. The soap made from rancid fats or grease will work just
as well as soap made from sweet and clean fats but not be as pleasant to
have around and use.

To render, fats and waste cooking grease are placed
in a large kettle and an equal amount of water is added. Then the kettle
is placed over the open fire outdoors. Soap making is an outside activity.
The smell from rendering the fats is too strong to wish in anyone's house.
The mixture of fats and water are boiled until all the fats have melted.
After a longer period of boiling to insure completion of melting the fats,
the fire is stopped and into the kettle is placed another amount of water
about equal to the first amount of water. The solution is allowed to cool
down and left over night. By the next day the fats have solidified and
floated to the top forming a layer of clean fat. All the impurities being
not as light as the fat remain in water underneath the fat.

You may have observed this in your own kitchen. When
a stew or casserole containing meat has been put in the refrigerator, you
could see the next day the same fat layer.

Finally The Soap Making Can Begin

In another large kettle or pot the fat is placed with
the amount of lye solution determined to be the correct amount. This is
easier said than done. We will discuss it more later. Then this pot is
placed over a fire again outdoors and boiled. This mixture is boiled until
the soap is formed. This is determined when the mixture boils up into a
thick frothy mass, and a small amount placed on the tongue causes no noticeable
"bite". This boiling process could take up to six to eight hours depending
on the amount of the mixture and the strength of the lye.

Soft and Hard Soap

Soap made with wood ash lye does not make a hard soap
but only a soft soap. When the fire is put out and the soap mixture allowed
to cool, the next day reveals a brown jelly like substance that feels slippery
to the touch, makes foam when mixed with water, and cleans. This is the
soft soap the colonists had done all their hard work to produce. The soft
soap is then poured into a wooden barrel and ladled out with a wooden dipper
when needed.

To make hard soap, common salt is thrown in at the
end of the boiling. If this is done a hard cake of soap forms in a layer
at the top of the pot. As common salt may be expensive and hard to get,
it is not usually wasted to make hard soap. Common salt is more valuable
to give to the livestock and the preserving of foods. Soft soap works just
as well as hard and for these reasons the colonists, making their own soap,
did not make hard soap bars.

In towns and cities where there were soap makers
making soap for sale, the soap could be converted to the hard soap by the
addition of salt. As hard bars it will be easier to store and transport.
Hard bars produced by the soap maker were often scented with oils such
as lavender, wintergreen, or caraway and were sold as toilet soap to persons
living in the cities or towns.

Hard soap is not cut into small bars and wrapped
as has been familiar. Soap made by the soap makers is poured into large
wooden frames and removed when cooled and hard.

The amount of soap a customer wants can be cut from
the large bar. Soap is sold usually by the pound. Small wrapped bars were
not available until the middle of the 19th century [nor maybe shortly after
the end of the 20th].

Difficulties in Making Soap

The hardest part is in determining if the lye is of
the correct strength, as we have said. In order to learn this, the soap
maker floats either a potato or an egg in the lye. If the object floats
with a specified amount of its surface above the lye solution, the lye
is declared fit for soap making. Most of the colonists felt that lye of
the correct strength would float a potato or an egg with an area the size
of a modern quarter above the surface. To make a weak lye stronger, the
solution can either be boiled down more or the lye solution can be poured
through a new batch of ashes. To make a solution weaker, water is added
[more data to be added here on how to determine the correct strength of
lye].

A Pennsylvania Dutch recipe once carefully warned
that a sassafras stick was the only kind of implement suitable for stirring
the mixture [see Hulda Clark comment above re sassafras] and the stirring
must be done always in the same direction [?].

Not Always Done Down On The Farm

Soap making as a trade had grown in direct proportion
with the growth of the colonies. Even in the very early days there were
tradesmen making and selling soap, who were called soapboilers. Since tallow
was the main ingredient for both soap and candles, many tradesmen were
producers of both. These tradesmen were called chandlers.

Potash and Pearlash Trade

Soap making and the manufacture of potash and pearlashes
were closely related trades of colonial America. Pearlash, purified potash,
because of its many industrial uses, was an important item of export for
the colonies. Pearlash, in addition to soap making, was used for making
glass both in the colonies and in Europe....

Potash is the residue remaining after all the water
has been driven off from the lye solution obtained from the leaching of
wood ashes. Pearlash is then made from the potash by baking it in a kiln
until all the carbon impurities were burned off. The fine, white powder
remaining was the Pearlash....